


The Taste of Fear is One We Know Well

by possiblyfictional



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A Very Sad Recap of Supernatural, Angst, Gen, SUFFER WITH ME, that's basically it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 01:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6450181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possiblyfictional/pseuds/possiblyfictional
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was inevitable. Eventually, someone was going to ask the question.</p>
<p>Based on 11x16, but no spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Taste of Fear is One We Know Well

_How messed up are our lives that you seeing a vision of dead me is actually kind of comforting?_

It’s Sammy’s half-birthday, his first. Mary tenderly coos at her baby. Little Dean leads his father to his room, child-like excitement evident in the thump of their footsteps on the hardwood floors.

Mary stares down at her second son for a moment, breathes a sigh of relief. Her life of hunting is gone. She’s happy. She has a family. No demons were there to chase her down, destroy her world, tear her life apart.

Her lips brush against Sam’s forehead, and she goes to kiss Dean goodnight. She tucks him in under superhero bed sheets, and murmurs words that she’ll never know will haunt her son every night.

A few minutes later, Dean carries his little brother out of his burning house, flames licking and chasing at his heels. Sammy screams in his arms, high-pitched wails that scare Dean more than a toddler should ever feel.

Mary is lost to the flames.

_I’m your little brother._

They grow up lonely.

Sam never really gets the hang of making friends, and he struggles in school because of the gaps in his education. Dean long since gave up on trying to learn anything. They’re only gone before the unit in science is over.

Dean shoves down all the self-hatred that he’s nurtured and held to his fragile heart, shoves down all the pain and suffering he chooses to keep, drowns his sorrows in whiskey he stole from Dad at sixteen.

The whole time, his nightmares are cast in fiery reds and somber shadows and maroon blood dripping from his brother’s face, ribs, stomach. Most of his nightmares consist of Sam dead, dying, or lost and alone.

Sam dreams of people dying. He never knows them. But, sometimes, he dreams of Dean. Sometimes it’s nice to see him, and sometimes it really isn’t.

They bear each other’s weight when they can’t stand because the monster of the week got to one of the brothers. One’s breath comes uneasy and quick, and the other prays to whoever’s listening that his brother comes out fine.

_I’m a monster, Dean._

Sam wakes up with sulfur-yellow eyes bright in his mind. He understands. He’s angry. He’s scared.

Dean doesn’t know how to console him.

God knows he might agree with Sam this time.

_How long?_

Dean averts his eyes and can’t bring them back to Bobby’s face.

_I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition._

Dean can’t believe it. Why would angels be watching over-

No.

Impossible.

He can’t breathe easy anymore. The weight of hell is a load he knows he’ll never shed. He can’t speak without effort, and sometimes it takes him hours to come back to his own body when he wakes up choking on his screams.

Dean can taste Alistair on his lips, can feel his snake-skin fingers against his back, through the feathers that had started to sprout instead of hair, gripping his jaw and yanking out his teeth one by one.

If he’s escaped hell, then why does he feel like he’s still there?

_If I didn’t know you, I’d want to hunt you._

It shakes Sam, but he can’t stop this time. He’s on the brink, and although he knows that the fall is so much darker than he sees, he doesn’t want to stop. Not even Dean’s face, filled with fury and worry and fear, can change Sam’s mind.

He can’t remember the last time he didn’t taste demon blood on the back of his tongue.

Maybe he never lived life without it.

_Because it had to be you. It always had to be you._

It gives Sam a faint idea, but he’s so scared and always craving demon blood and so exhausted he doesn’t know how to process this. All he knows is that he’s tired.

Dean is the true vessel of heaven’s mightiest. He is the leader of the purest of them all, the most righteous.

Sam is the example of hell, of suffering, of pain and hurt and losing yourself to darkness.

Is that all he is?

He might be, but he doesn’t know. They don’t talk about it. Sam wants to, but he doesn’t know how. He was never taught how to talk about these things.

_If you wanted to kill your brother, you should have done it outright._

It silences Dean, sends a hidden shock through his body. The anger that lingers in Cas’ eyes is rare, and it’s something painful when directed at him.

Sam obviously doesn’t care.

It kind of hurts Dean to know his brother couldn’t possibly give a crap about him now, or anything they’ve been through.

He hides it with whiskey.

_Cas, you child. Why don’t you listen to me._

He’s gone, again. Dean can’t breathe, and neither can Sam. They’re adrift. Sam gasps for air when he’s alone. He collapses in the shower, water pouring down his back as he can’t breathe and he’s sure he’s going to die and he would call out for Dean but his jaw won’t move and he can’t lift his head he’s so scared and his heart is pounding in his chest and he’s weak, so weak, and why can’t he do anything right he’s so terrified he can’t breathe right-

The panic attack subsides eventually, and the water runs cold.

He’s scared to turn on the news, but he does.

Maybe that’s what starts the crack in his walls.

_You know me. Always happy to bleed for the Winchesters._

God, Dean knows. He and Sam should know better.

They can’t stop the bleeding now, though, can they? They’re trapped in a bitter cycle, and Dean has no idea how to get out of it. He’s cornered himself, and only now are the consequences starting to crop up and appear in sharp red of loved one’s blood on the backseat of the car.

_I’m sorry, I think you have to go back to the start._

Dean knows Cas doesn’t mean the underlying interpretation of the words, but he can’t help but think about them.

_But there was something about being there. It felt pure._

Sam sits in silence, watching his brother.

He’s different. He looks almost serene, but Sam can tell he’s eyeing the room, scanning and categorizing in ways Sam can’t begin to understand.

If anything, he’s sorry he never picked up the phone.

He was breaking down.

In all honesty, he isn’t even sure Amelia is real. He’s just praying that she is, that whatever impact on his life she had wasn’t created by his ravaged brain.

He still dreams of people dying. Some people he knows, some he doesn’t.

_It’s okay, Mom._

The brothers wish they could say the same.

It’s a mutual understanding between the two in that moment. They’ll do all they possibly can to save Kevin and his mother.

When they’re both gone, Sam looks back and thinks about that moment.

_I need you_.

He looks up at Cas, his heart in his throat, almost crying but not quite. He hurts.

He feels torn apart, torn open, torn to nothing.

He thinks about how maybe he never really did leave hell, it just changed.

He sighs ever-so-softly when Cas drops the blade, and he leans ever-so-slightly into the hand on his face. He feels himself heal.

He hurts. He is so tired.

_I mean, if I’m dead, I stay dead._

Sam is done. He’s lost it all. He deserves peace. It took him years to understand that, and now he wants it. God, he’s so close, he’s so close to that. His body aches. He still dreams of death. He can’t sleep right, and Lucifer laughs in his ears when he closes his eyes.

God, he can’t even put headphones on. He’s scared he’ll miss he sound of Dean screaming for his help while he sits, unaware as his brother is torn to shreds by some unknown monster.

He has a way out. He’s on the brink of death, probably in some hospital bed, life support breathing for his fragile body.

It’s ripped away from him in a brilliant flash of white. He’s trapped, chained to an angel who laughs maniacally in his ears as he’s tugged to and fro.

This time, he’s screaming for Dean in his own head, much like his time with Lucifer, screaming for Dean to let him die, let him go, let him have his peace.

His sobs are drowned out by Dean’s words echoing to Sam through ears no longer his to hear through. His brother is relieved.

Sam shakes, pounds on the walls confining him. Gadreel laughs, silences him, forces him to sleep.

_Dear boy, you’re all duct tape and safety pins inside. How are you alive?_

Sam hears it faintly, but he isn’t there. Instead, Gadreel laughs at Sam in his head. He’s trapped, and it annoys him. He still shakes, and he’s still panicked all the time, but at least he feels his soul and body healing.

What sucks is that Gadreel is healing, too. And every day, his vice goes stronger.

So, when asked exactly how he’s alive, all he can do is laugh.

He shouldn’t be alive.

He doesn’t want to be alive.

_Kevin?!_

Burned sockets and a blank expression are all that’s left of Kevin when he rounds the corner. Dean’s knees weaken, but he has to stand.

He vividly remembers the words. _It’s okay, Mom._

That night he avoids the whiskey and gives in to the grief that swathes him in pained gasps and shuddering breaths.

_But you have to know, with the Mark comes a great burden._

Dean should have known better when Cain said that, but he didn’t ask the demon to elaborate.

Dean would do anything to turn back time, but he doesn’t. He can’t.

As soon as the raised red is on his arm, he knows he won’t win in the battle against it.

_I’m proud of us._

Sam’s hope flickers out with those four words. He holds Dean against his chest, ignores the blood on his clothes, hides his tears against Dean’s shoulder, feels Dean’s chest give out and refuse to rise again.

Sam doesn’t move for a very long time.

_It changed you._

It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to see that, but Dean can’t feel any hurt about it. In all actuality, he doesn’t feel anything except anger and a glimpse of happiness. It’s great. He doesn’t care, has no ties to anything. Dean is free in ways he hasn’t felt in a long time.

Now, if he didn’t have to kill to keep himself sated, he’d be okay.

_I’m just trying to do the right thing, man. 'Cause I am so sick and tired of doing the wrong one._

With two sentences, Sam is subdued. Doesn’t Dean understand? He feels exactly the same way.

Once upon a time, he would have asked if there’s anything he can do to help take the weight off his brother’s shoulders.

Now, he says nothing.

_I’m so sorry, kiddo._

Dean knows it means nothing, and that Charlie can see straight through him.

She gives him a look.

It’s hard to meet her eyes.

_Your father’s a hero. He did not die in vain._

Claire doesn’t look at him, and Dean wishes he knew how to help her.

The best way to do that, realistically, is that she never calls again, she moves on, and she lets her father be a figment of the past.

Dean gets why she can’t do that.

_They can help you remember, what it was to be good, what it was to love._

Dean couldn’t feel what that meant at the time, but later, when he was looking at the photos, post-demon, he recalls how these pictures were taken years ago.

Sam had kept them after all this time?

Dean's grip is a little tighter.

_How messed up are our lives that you seeing a vision of dead me is actually kind of comforting?_

Sam and Dean sit in silence, humor concealing the dark that follows them.

Dean just huffs a laugh.


End file.
